Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #876 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-02-17
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 100 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Originally broadcast in 10-minute segments on BBC2, Marion & Geoff is a very funny if at times unrelentingly bleak comedy in which Rob Brydon plays Keith, a hapless cuckold who addresses us via a camcorder set up in his mini-cab. The Marion and Geoff of the title are his estranged wife and her new lover, though as Keith--who never fails to perceive a bright side to his utterly dismal existence--says, "I don't feel I've lost a wife, I've gained a friend."

Through his monologues, we learn that Keith has a room in a student house where banging techno is played day and night; that in order to make the journey to see his two boys, he must make an overnight journey from London to Cardiff by car; that his only friend is a tollbooth operator (though the operator doesn't seem to know it) and that, although he's been driving a minicab for a while, he's yet to pick up a fare.

Keith's attempts to buy presents for his children generally backfire ("I've kept the receipts. I learned that from my old dad. He always used to say keep the receipts"), no more heartrendingly so than in an evidently disastrous attempt to pay a surprise visit to the newly attached Marion and the kids in Disneyland. As he hugs the tiny Winnie the Pooh puppets he's tried to give to his children, his uniformly chipper tone wavers momentarily and the comedy threatens to darken into something like tragedy. However, Keith's indomitable if inappropriate optimism eventually enables him to bumble through. Masterly in its veracity and Pooteresque banality, Marion & Geoff is as near-flawless as The Office.

On the DVD: Marion & Geoff on disc comes with an informative if somewhat giggly commentary, featuring Brydon and director and cowriter Hugo Blick. There's the Comic Relief special, in which Keith's cheque to the charity bounces with typically pitiful consequences and outtakes from the series, all of which would have merited inclusion in the final edit. --David Stubbs

Special Features
4:3
DVD 5
English
English
Region 2
Dolby Digital Stereo English
Dolby Digital Stereo
Special Commentary From Rob Brydon And Hugo Blick
18 Minutes Of Outtakes
Comic Relief Special
Photo Gallery

Synopsis
Marion is min-cab driver Keith's wife. Geoff is the man she's run off with. She's taken Keith's "little smashers," his kids Rhys and Alun, with her. MARION & GEOFF is simply a series of monologues from Keith, with his camera fixed to his dashboard, as he goes about his daily life. His bleak, darkly funny and ever-optimistic commentary to the unseen, off-camera downward-spiralling developments in his sad, estranged existence, expose him as a true innocent. These 10-minute monologues are compulsive, car-crash comedy.

Customer Reviews

A true classic that helped shape British comedy's future.
Marion and Geoff has a lot going for it. It is in a class of rare television that will make you stay in to watch it and at only ten minutes an episode, that's not bad going. Of a similar ilk to 'The Office,' Rob Brydon masterfully plays out an ingeniously funny script whose beauty on screen lies in its simplicity and under-direction. Added to this, its executive production team boasts the likes of Steve Coogan, the mastermind behind 'I'm Alan Partridge,' and the birth of the scripted docu-soap. A true must for any collection worth its weight.

A Little Smasher
Marion & Geoff stands obvious comparison to I'm Alan Partridge or The Office - as comedy with a heavy helping of tragedy, and based around the delusions of the main character - but it is more artful than either of those, and really owes most of its inspiration to Alan Bennett's Talking Heads. Where it surpasses even that series is in sustained length - three times the length of Bennett's monologues - and that it's a lot funnier. And absolutely heartbreaking.

The DVD has been designed to watch with all ten episodes run into one another, which provides greater continuity but makes for some odd features, like the brilliantly punctuating title and credits music in between episodes playing to a blank black screen. It also slightly upsets the sense of the series playing out over a period of months, from separation through divorce to Keith's optimistic solo toast in the penultimate episode "to my new life, to my kids ... and to Marion & Geoff."

But these are tiny gripes in an otherwise faultless experience. Keith Barrett, the giggly, blinkered cabbie is, unlike Alan Partridge and David Brent, impossible not to like, and the frequent cringes are born of genuine sympathy more than embarrassment. The ten-minute structure of each episode disciplined writers Brydon and Blick into packing each scene with nuance and meaning, yet it works well as a story arc when watched all together, particularly the mesmerising central episode consisting, in one take, of Keith's relating how he first discovered Marion & Geoff were having an affair, during a summer barbecue. The direction and editing are masterful too (the motorway lights illuminating Keith's face one by one as he silently drives four and half hours to fail to see his little smashers yet again; the cuts as you sense he's about to lose his silver lining for once), making a one-shot monologue with a video camera into a modern tragedy absolutely bristling with life - and death. "Bit of a shock," as Keith says when he goes to see the monkeys ("my favourites") in the safari park during yet another eventless afternoon alone in the car. "They've all been shot."

Utterly peerless intelligent comedy
Keith is a mini-cab driver. His life is awful, lonely and sad. Yet he fails to realise it and remains optimistic about the direction of his life. Much of the story is Keith talking to the audience through a mini-camera in his car, telling of what he has been through and how his life has come out the way it has.

Full of hope that he can see his 'little smashers' following divorce; Keiths story is both beautiful scripted and immaculately delivered. It delves from occasional comedy to bleak introspection and surprises with some genuinely moving moments. The limited set of Keiths car is surprisingly not as restrictive as you might think with different locations creating an appropriate mood for each segment of the story.

If you are looking for a slightly unusual and intelligent comedy then this is an excellent choice. If you come expecting straight gags then it is not.